In mid-afternoon trading on Wednesday, the technology sector was generally up. ASML rose 2.3 percent, Infineon was up 0.7 percent, while STMicrolectronics advanced by 0.3 percent, and Alcatel, a French telecommunications group, rose by 1.8 percent.

Alcatel’s advance came on speculation that they were looking into forging closer ties to Thales, the defense electronics group. Alcatel already owns 9 percent of Thales.

The pharmaceuticals sector was off, however, with Roche falling 0.6 percent and Sanofi-Aventis down 0.4 percent. Novartes, the Swiss drug company, was down by 0.1 percent, partly due to a report of adverse affects on patients of their epilepsy drug but chiefly due to profit-taking after several day of advances.

By mid-afternoon, the European markets were down, with the FTSE Eurofirst 300 off by 0.4 percent to 1,066.39, Frankfurt’s Xetra Dax down 0.5 percent to 4,182.90, and in Paris, the CAC-40 was down by 0.3 percent to 3,975.07.

These losses came despite the gains in the technology sector as well as positive earnings reports from Intel and Yahoo in the United States.